Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011

Christopher Hitchens, the prolific journalist and polemicist (among the targets of his pen were Henry Kissinger, Mother Theresa and Bill Clinton, his classmate at Oxford), has died at age 62. He was an occasional lecturer at UC Berkeley and an I.F. Stone Fellow at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Here he is in conversation with Harry Kreisler, Executive Director of UC Berkeley's Institute of International Studies. Hitchens, who was diagnosed with esophageal cancer last June. He seems to have written and published more in the interim than most writers produce in a career. It seems fitting that his latest book, a collection of essays entitled Arguably, is both a bestseller and, according to The New York Times, one of the 10 best books of 2011.